


a brighter sun will rise for you

by endae



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Blood, Family, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Post-Episode: s02e20 Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls, Sibling Love, Slight IV mention but it's only for a second
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-20 16:58:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21060065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endae/pseuds/endae
Summary: After the war is won, Mabel thinks there's nothing left to be afraid of. After saving the town and recovering Stan's memory, she thinks it would finally be over.She's wrong.





	a brighter sun will rise for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mysterytwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterytwin/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Restart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6050365) by [carpenoctem22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carpenoctem22/pseuds/carpenoctem22). 

> [Tumblr Link](http://endae.tumblr.com/post/163960422780/20-dipper-and-mabel-if-its-not-too-much-to)
> 
> Originally posted August 8, 2017.
> 
> This one is inspired by one of my most favorite post-Weirdmageddon fics ever. You can check out Restart if you feel like it, but you absolutely don't need to in order to understand this fic. The only context you need is basically that it's rooted in the idea of Dipper's injuries from Weirdmageddon finally catching up with him. That's genuinely all you need to know!
>
>> _superishs asked: 20 + dipper and mabel!!! if it's not too much to ask :)_   

> 
> ****
> 
> **[20. “I’ll protect you no matter what…even if it kills me.”]**

* * *

Stan’s outcry from the front of the Shack draws an abrupt end to her conversation with Grenda. But the moment Mabel pivots on her heel to face his direction, whatever words she’d been planning to say die in her mouth.

As if it’s triggered some honed response of survival, Ford flies past her without another beat.

The realization hits her like a train, and she takes off after him.

What she lacks in speed she makes up for in determination, sprinting just inches behind him. Her heart pounds in time with her steps, the thunder in her ears like a precursor of the storm to come. Weaving through the townsfolk gathered on their lawn, they part like an ocean giving way for a rescue, without a single word. It speaks volumes.

The front porch has never felt so far away. All their days chased out of the forest, yet none of them could measure up to the dread growing inside her now. Run. _Run faster. _Panting hard, she shakes her head in disbelief, the mantras of_ ‘no’_ hanging on the edge of her lips.

She’s already put two-and-two together: Ford was right beside her when Stan yelled, and it wasn’t his own name that he’d shouted.

It isn’t fair. To weather an apocalypse and a half, and still feel the terror caged in her chest. _It isn’t fair, _to beat the odds against Stan’s wiped memory, to suffer the gaps of the unknown alongside him and still have it come to this, feeling like they still had everything to lose.

They were so close — so achingly _close _to making it out of this…

But it takes the sight of Dipper cradled limp in Stan’s arms and the sickening drop in her gut to realize that their nightmare is still far from over.

* * *

If she thought the drive to the hospital would be the worst part, she was wrong.

Waiting was the worst part.

The drive made for a close second, though — Stan’s running of every red light in town is no new fear, but the urgency behind it this time could send her over the edge. For every sharp turn he takes, Mabel finds herself gripping her brother a little tighter each time, if only to keep him from flinging out of the seat.

They’ve laid him across her lap, and the few times he has in her life, it’s been for reasons far less dire. Car sickness when they were younger. An hour or two on the bus ride up to town.

But not this. _Never this._

_“His head won’t stop bleeding,”_ is a string of words she never wants to hear again. 

Or the sensation of feeling it start to ooze into her skirt.

_‘Almost there. Almost there.’_

Nerves frayed to the point of snapping altogether, she distracts herself however possible. Her eyes dart manic across the car, fixating on the rear-view mirror and all its truths. The passing trees, the buildings — mere hours ago, the rubble of a town they learned to call home. Anything to keep her from looking down.

But try as she might, for as far as her eyes wander, they always wind up drawn back to his face. How could they not? It’s pale in a way it shouldn’t be. It’s beaten and blotched in shades she didn’t think it could.

How much more was he hiding under his clothes? _Broken bones? Scars? _

Dipper’s never suffered anything that a bandage couldn’t fix. Even then, it was always a hug before it was a first aid kit. They’ve escaped this whole summer with bumps, scrapes, it only fed into the illusion of how invincible they could be.

It was only inevitable that their luck would run out eventually.

She just didn’t expect the burden to fall so hard on only one of them. 

Even still, she thinks harnessing a fleeting bravery could keep the nervous breakdown at bay, but the raw emotion dripping from Stan’s demeanor tells her she should be afraid. The illusion’s all but shattered now, the proof screaming all around her. Between the reckless swerves, the crossfire of her uncle’s voices, and the growing worry of what else might be wrong with him, it leaves her frozen in her seat, detached from everything.

Mabel fights off every urge that isn’t keeping him in place.

She’s so afraid to touch him. 

But the most she’ll permit herself is let her hand atop his head slip down, her thumb coming to rest across his cheek. The smallest comfort she can give right now.

_‘Hang in there Dip…’_ she thinks, swallowing hard. _‘You’re gonna be okay. You always are.’_

By the time they come to a screeching halt in the hospital parking lot, she’s already gone numb. Either by his weight in her lap or the adrenaline starting to wear off, she isn’t sure, but it leaves the world a muffled blur of too many sounds and too many motions.

When it isn’t Stan grabbing for her brother, it’s medical personnel. It’s nurses. Assistants. There are so many hands on him, and it’s breaking her more than anything that none of them can be hers.

They whisk him off someplace she can’t follow.

It doesn’t stop her from trying.

* * *

Hours later, when they finally let them see him, Mabel’s the first one to step inside the room.

She doesn’t get far, though.

For all the time spent waiting to see him, she freezes still at the threshold of the door. It’s no new scenery — literally, it might be the same exact room they had the first time. It seems like eons ago, back from her play. Back when the most they had to worry about was a sprained wrist.

Even if it is, the déjà vu only serves to prove how much worse it is this time.

He looks. _Awful._

Motionless, Dipper lays before them in a state that says everything that he can’t. Between the hours, his bruises have had time to blossom beneath his skin. What isn’t purple is black, what isn’t black is red with cuts. And that’s only what she can see, the rest concealed under his bandages – including the cast now encaging his right arm. There are tubes and wires snaking over metal stands, each venturing into separate parts of him. He’s wearing that mask only meant for the patients that really need it, _and he shouldn’t need it._

It claws open some endless pit in her stomach the more she picks up, the reality setting in of just how serious it is.

The bright of the room leaves nothing to hide, his condition on full display like some makeshift exhibit for all their anguish.

She winces. Of course he looks worse.

When Mabel can’t bring herself to look at him any longer, her eyes drift to the window beside him. Night has already started to fall. Beyond the glass, the sun’s well into its descent over the hills. The world is quiet. The soft chirp of the crickets outside are as welcoming as they are rattling, a jarring reminder of just how much time has passed since they rushed him here.

In some sweeping sense of vertigo, it all hits her as she sways inside the door frame. The little eternities, each stretching far longer than they should be allowed to, the agonizing wait for answers between all of them. Only now does she feel the weight of all of them combined, crashing into her existence as one giant thud.

It’s an agonizing few hours before it’s a few minutes of silence, but they’re here. _They’re here,_ and any moment they can have with him in sight is enough.

Behind her, Stan pulls her out of her daze when she feels him run his fingers gently through her hair in solidarity.

“He’ll be fine sweetie. Just give ‘im some time.”

He follows it with some remark of how tough he is, how he’s handled worse — a hopeful reminder of how much of his memory he’s recovered, but the message doesn’t reach her entirely. On some level, she registers that Stan is still talking to her. He is, but it’s muddled beneath what little concentration she has left, all spent trying to determine how much Dipper’s actually breathing on his own.

The longer she looks, the more it sinks in. There was only so much she could glean from the car ride.

But…the number of them eat at her. How old they looked under the blaring medical lights.

Some gnawing urge begs her to sift through her head for answers, for anything. The only thing that comes to her is a somber moment they shared days before the end. Amid the despair swirling around them, it gave her something worth holding onto. Because in the solemn promise she made to mirror Dipper’s of never letting him leave her sight, she can’t remember him enduring half these battle wounds.

She can’t remember a single instance that he’d injured his head so badly that it bled, and that comes with its own surge of paranoia — how long he’d been hiding it.

Trying to anchor the brick forming fast in her chest, Mabel flits through what memories she can. There must be some shred of rationale hiding in there, somewhere. He wasn’t hurt the days leading up to the raid. He couldn’t have been. Because even then, building the Shacktron all in the low glow of whatever they could light aflame, she’d seen them. His bruises weren’t a color that turned her stomach the way they did now.

So how much of this was with his from his mission with Ford? How much of it was it from the Fearamid?

It leaves a gap she doesn’t want to fill, but it sends the brick deeper, deeper.

…how much of this was him getting to her bubble?

She tenses up at the thought.

“…Wanna look after him for a bit?” Stan suggests, just as she tunes back into him. He nudges her forward when she can’t bring herself to. “’Kid looks like he could use some company.”

There’s the unspoken prod of _“but what about you,” _but as soon as it comes to her, it’s fleeting. She knows why. There’s more binding her and Stan in right this moment than there’s ever been.

While her brother endured for days in the throes of the apocalypse, his had suffered through several more at Bill’s mercy. Even if she’d been a few degrees removed from reality at the time, there are more than a few pieces she gathered from the car ride.

If Dipper emerged from his own desperate survival this poorly, she doubts Ford was fairing any better.

Taking this as his cue for an attempt at privacy, she nods, silent.

He does too, punctuating it with a gentle squeeze of her shoulder. Stan rounds the corner to leave them be, and the air is all but a vacuum with just the two of them alone.

She doesn’t move for eons, but some otherworldly force finally pulls her into the room.

There’s a lot she wants to say, at first. _‘I’m glad you’re okay’ _comes to her like a bullet, but even that wasn’t a guarantee yet. _‘Are you okay?’_ is a senseless thought, and _‘Please wake up,’ _is as desperate as it is selfish.

_‘I’m sorry,’_ is lost in there, somewhere.

What ends up coming out, comes as casually as she hopes this’ll all be in the end.

“Hey bro.”

Nothing. No twitch, no response. She isn’t sure why she’s even expecting one. He’s the picture of fragility if one were to ever exist. He’s in no shape to be alive, let alone conscious.

At her side, she grips the offering in her hands a little tighter: flowers. A small gift from one of the clerks, passed wordlessly to her as she sat waiting in the foyer. Maybe as an act to help calm her nerves, she remembers the warmth that filled her chest at the smile the shopkeeper wore when they reached her hands.

Bringing them up and into view, she smiles too.

“One of the ladies downstairs gave me these,” she says, presenting them. “How sweet is she, right? They knew you needed some color in here.”

Anything to brighten up the sterility of the room. They’re already starting to wilt if she squints hard enough, but she values the sentiment far more than she does the state of them. Spotting the glass vase atop the table next to him, she plants them inside.

Quiet, as if a pin drop would be enough to wake him, she takes her own seat beside him.

She didn’t need to do this before.

It’s silent for a long, long time.

But…like a wish answered, she feels it. Slowly, the tension melts away from her shoulders. With every new breath she takes, they leave her a little more healed each time. As scary as this all was at the start — before the last stand, before the Rift — she finally feels it. Some finite amount of peace drapes over this moment, and she basks in it. 

When she looks at him, for once, since this whole nightmare began, it doesn’t feel like the world was ending.

Something stirs within her, and she reaches for his hand.

The IV in his arm will be the thinnest veil that’s come between them this week. In a sense, it’s a comforting thought — something that removes him so far from it all that he can recover, but still keeps him close enough that they can stay at his side like this.

He won’t hear her… and it’d be foolish to think he could. But deep down, there’s that conviction. Because some small part of him must.

“It’s amazing, y’know? Beneath all those brains, you’re like a total superhero,” she praises, soft. “Which isn’t cool for the rest of us. So save some of the glory for everyone else, will you?”

It comes with a dry chuckle, but she’s the only one laughing. The most he gives her is a breath drawn out a little longer, a little deeper than the others. Another testament that he’s as dead to the world as he had been hours ago — but she shakes off the wording before it leeches onto her.

Her smile falls away, the gravity of her own conclusions starting to weigh down her heart. Earnest as she feels she’ll ever be, the façade drops, and she lets the sincerity come trickling through. 

“…You went through all of this. For me,” she murmurs, running her thumb across his scraped knuckles. Only one of the many injuries she’s just now starting to see. “I don’t know why you _would_. After everything I put you through.”

Half of her wants to climb up there with him. He looks lonely. But she’ll settle for the chair tonight. Mabel crosses her arms atop the cot to lay her head on, but her eyes don’t leave him. Even if she isn’t remotely within his league of exhausted, she’s just as tired. It’s been a long, long week.

Time passes. Like liquid between her fingers, it flows far too fast. When she blinks, it’s almost been twenty minutes of this. Waiting and watching. What she wouldn’t have given to have this luxury when they arrived.

Time passes, and it’s quiet, broken only by the EKG droning away at his side. In its screen, she sees them, the peaks and valleys telling her it’s okay to settle down now. There’s a stream of his heart monitor beeps telling her it’s time to relax. Lulling as it is, she already feels her eyes starting to droop, all other sound outside this room melting away in lieu of the only one that matters. Endless and soothing, that gentle two-beat rhythm — _reminder_ — says all she needs. _‘Still-here._ _Still-here.’_

It gives her the courage, remnants of it, to give breath to the feelings laying low in her heart all this time.

“…I’m making you a promise, okay? Even if the scariest thing we’ve gotta face back home is bullies.” A beat. This was Dipper, after all. “—Or the principal. You choose.”

Every other evil has never felt so ordinary. In three months’ time, Gravity Falls has had more than enough reasons to spell out just how evil that could get. They had to look after each other — and they _have_. There are golden moments she can pick out so clearly, when she was the one wearing the cape for once. Stealing the amulet from Gideon. Cocking the confetti canon while belting her heart out. 

But what began in innocence, she’s seen take on a life of its own in him. In time, it’s become some consuming, grievous oath, because there was always something far more sinister. _There was always something much more dangerous. _

From the first day with the gnomes, it was born. From that moment on, she knew.

It’s an oath Dipper — inadvertently — took the moment they stepped off the bus. 

Every grab of her hand, every act of bravery, the message always came clearly. He reinforced it every time he stepped in front of her, arms outstretched, bracing for anything. As touching as it could ever be, the pang of guilt coursing through her is enough to know that it’s time for a balance shift.

“So if it’s bullies, or the principal, or...something really dangerous…”

The words sound foreign on her own lips, but they couldn’t be any more genuine.

_‘You’ve always protected me, so…’_

“I’ll protect you, no matter what…” she whispers, tucking his hand a little closer to her cheek. The weight of her own words hit her. Her voice nearly shakes, borders on cracking. After how many times he’s laid down his life for hers, these last few days especially, it’s a resolve she’ll follow into the night.

If there’s even the slightest chance he’s really listening, she condemns the last half to her thoughts, and hers’ alone.

_‘…even if it kills me.’_


End file.
